WHO warns of a world-wide bird flu epedemic
(IHT.com)
Updated: 2005-09-17 15:16

"We have learned in the past weeks that bad things can happen very fast," said Michael Leavitt, the U.S. health and human services secretary, as he explained the need for the new partnership to fight bird flu proposed by Bush, whose administration has been widely charged with being unprepared for the hurricane and its aftermath.

In fact, experts said, rational planning for the possibility of a worldwide pandemic is in many ways even more challenging than planning for a Category 5 storm, because the vaccines are novel and the drugs have not been used in this capacity before.

But as countries spend tens of millions to prepare for bird flu, they are investing in uncertain and untested strategies, even WHO officials acknowledge. The basic problem is that the A(H5N1) virus has not yet changed in any way that would allow for widespread human infection. What is more, health officials said they would not be certain about how to combat the virus until after it actually mutated, when they could study its actual composition and how deadly it was.

"We know we're overdue for an influenza pandemic strain and we know it will occur, but we don't know when or even exactly what virus will cause it," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the WHO.

"It is possible that the virus won't be H5N1 at all or that this virus will change in a way so that the vaccine under development doesn't work against it."

He said the WHO would not comment on whether it was rational for countries to be spending so much on medicine orders. But, he added, "we think it is wise because it encourages the companies to do the research and development on this very difficult problem."

The potential for the spread of the bird flu virus among humans has long worried health authorities, because the virus has a couple of characteristics that make it capable of igniting a serious pandemic: It is a new strain, so humans have no defenses against it; and it produces severe disease, killing about half of those humans who have been infected, almost all through contact with sick birds.